I have moved to a new blog

Hello

Thank you for reading my blog.

I have started a new blog to focus on my photography.

Hopefully, you will visit my new blog at http://lightandfield.blogspot.com.au/

Thank you

Red Sunset

I went out to shoot the strange red sunset caused by the smoke from a bushfire yesterday. 

Trip to Stirling Range

I had a photo trip to the Stirling Range last week.

I arrived at a caravan park around 6:00 PM. I quickly set up my tent and went out to take photos of the Bluff Knoll as the sun was going down.

Next morning, I drove to Albany to see their wind power turbines. 

I have been thinking that it will be interesting to bring a group of Japanese students along with ours to Albany on a camp trip when they are visiting our school in July. 

It is a long road ahead for Japan to clean up a big mess at the Fukushima nuclear power station, and  I think it will be a good experience for the students to visit the wind power station here. It might give them something to think about possibilities of alternative energy sources for Japan's future.

On the way back to the Bluff Knoll, I stopped at the Porongurup Range to go up on a hill to do some bush walking.

I wake up at 4:30AM next morning to go up on the Bluff Knoll, but I gave it up as it was too windy and too dangerous to walk on the ridge, I thought. 

I was looking at the mountain from the car park, and my car was shaking left and right violently in the wind. I got out of the car to see what it was like, and I wasn't able to stand straight let alone holding my camera steady.

So I left the Bluff Knoll, and went up the Mount Trio instead before jumping back on the car to drive home.

Tetris

Everyone was crazy about Tetris when I was in high school. As I remembered, the game was developed by the old Soviet as an education program.

I saw piles of containers in Fremantle yesterday. They reminded me of the Russian music that was playing in Tetris, and Perestroika, which my friend and I thought was a type of Russian bread at that time.

Little afternoon visitor

It was something like 34 degree today.

I went outside to see if I should go fishing, but it felt too hot, so I went back inside.

As I was closing a door, I saw a tiny cricket hanging on the door frame.

Perhaps our visitor was taking refuge from heat as well.

Once in a red moon

The river and sky looked spooky because of the eerie moon eclipse last night.

Canon's auto white balance is usually great, but it was producing a strange colour cast.

We went home before vampires were coming out.

Richard Avedon at the Art Gallery of WA

I went to see an exhibition of Richard Avedon's work at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

I thought a photo of a female model standing in front of elephants was interesting. The model looked very graceful in a beautiful dress while elephants had a chain on their legs, and they were looking rather sad. The animals had lost their wildness and freedom while the model stood with her chin up with her pride and elegance.

I don't know what the photographer's intention was, but to me, the image was showing an ugliness lying behind beauty. Something we tend to overlook in our society. 

I must say other images didn't appeal to me much partly because of a terrible lighting that the gallery had set up. Almost every image had a spot light at it from a wrong angle and wrong height I guess, which was creating a terrible reflection not only on that image but also onto the image sitting next to it.

I moved left and right like a crab facing an enemy fish to find a better angle of attack, but my effort was fruitless. How I am meant to enjoy an art work if I just can't see the image properly?

Anyway, I picked up two brochures before I left the gallery, and it was ironic that these looked far better than what I saw in the exhibition.

Spring flowers

Flowers are blooming. It is Springtime in Australia.

梅の花が咲き始めています。西オーストラリアは、春になりました。

Silver print

My friend and I tried digital silver print yesterday.

First, I created a negative by printing out an image onto a sheet of OHP film with my Canon printer. Then I took it to my friend's darkroom to develop images using silver printing technique.

It took us a whole afternoon to figure out what we were supposed to be doing, but in the end, we got some ideas of the process.

I am not sure yet about if there is  any big benefit of the old printing method against printing images with a top quality ink jet printer where I got a huge selection of paper to choose, but it was fun at least.

Colourful flowers on a winter day

I was busy on the past two weekends as I was taking our guests from Japan to do some sightseeing around Perth. 

They left here on the last Monday, so I had time to my self on the weekend.  I went to camera shops to buy some photo paper, and catch up with my friends at a park.

The weather has been good for the past few days, and flowers are looking to be enjoying warm sunny days.

Ditch your car and walk

Every time I drive around to take photos, I end up getting annoyed for not being able to stop my car and take photos. Seeing something interesting, and all I can do is to keep driving with a flow of traffic. 

It will be OK, if I was on a country road, but in places like Perth and Fremantle where free parking spots are as rare as car drivers who can merge, the best option is to ditch my car and walk. If I was to cover a larger area, I would rather jump on my brompton and pedal along instead.

Going slow is probably not a good thing, if I was a pizza deliverer. For photographers, it is a different story, I think.

A man on a bridge

A photo of a fisherman on the Riverton Bridge at dusk.

I thought light was interesting.

Moon light

The moon was very bight and beautiful on the weekend.

My long weekend

We had a long public holiday weekend last week.

I went fishing for bream on Saturday, but I didn't get much result. So, I quit fishing early and went to Fremantle to take some photos instread.

My friend and I then went fishing again on Sunday, but we didn get much again.

I had given up on fishing by then, so I stayed at home on Monday to do some work for our photography class.